Sim City
by OpportuneMoment
Summary: When Miss Parker is kidnapped, Sydney appeals to Jarod to perform one of his simulations...
1. An Eventful Morning

_**SIM CITY**_

**__**

_Author: Gillian Slater_

_Email: When Miss Parker is kidnapped, Sydney appeals to Jarod to perform one of his simulations..._

_Disclaimer: Whilst I love these characters, I clearly didn't invent them, and am just hijacking them to perform for me... Please don't sue._

**Part One - Eventful Morning**

7.00 am.

Before an exquisite antique mirror, Miss Parker made a final check of her appearance. Flawless. Impeccable. Of course, she'd never show up for work in any other condition, despite whatever emotional trauma Jarod's latest prank had caused her.

She stepped out of her house confidently and took a deep breath of the crisp Delaware morning. _Today's the day,_ she repeated her daily mantra silently to herself.

Getting into her car, she forced a supercilious smile onto her face. _Today the bastard's mine._ Truth be known, these affirmations were the only thing that let her move on from all the yesterdays of defeat and humiliation, the only thing which kept her icy determination from melting.

As she drove on autopilot towards Blue Cove, her mind wandered, trying to fathom what job Jarod would be headed to this morning. Rocket scientist? Nanny? Garbage man? Pro snowboarder? God, she envied him, the diversity his genius allowed him. And the worst part was, he knew it. Somehow the smug son of a bitch had her utterly figured out, no matter what face she presented to the world.

A dark blur flashed across her vision, and she stomped on the brake, her mind snapping back to the moment. _Did I hit him?_ There was no impact as the car screeched to a halt. She sat, breathing hard.

A knock on the window. She turned to see the man she thought she'd hit, looking fierce and angry. As she rolled down the window, the ugly stranger shoved a revolver in her face!

"GET OUT!" his order came as a ragged gasp.

"Oh, you have GOT to be joking!"

_A carjacking. How original._ She scowled contemptuously at the thug as she slowly emerged from her sleek company car. Gesturing with his gun and some inarticulate grunts, he directed her to get in the passenger seat, and got behind the wheel.

"Your mother must be _so_ proud," she sneered at him as they drove away.

**End of Part One**


	2. Call For Help

_**SIM CITY**_

**Part Two - Call For Help**

"So... it's a game where you create these digital characters and then use them to simulate situations - genius!"

The young store clerk continued to stare at the grinning man as though he was from another planet. Who'd never heard of _The Sims_ for god's sake?

"Riiight. So, you gonna buy it or not?"

"I'll take two."

--------------------

4.07 am.

In a scruffy motel room, Jarod sat cross-legged on the bed in front of his laptop, the same silly grin still playing about his mouth as he directed the meticulously constructed digital Miss Parker around an abandoned warehouse, whilst digital Sydney took notes.

"Oh, bad luck Miss Parker," Jarod commiserated, "Looks like you just missed him again."

He saved his carefully modified version of the game, ejected it and slipped it into its reprinted case: _Sims: The Centre_. Slipping it into a padded brown envelope, he addressed it to Miss Parker's home, his smile broadening as he thought of her reaction. It was such a delicious pleasure, taunting her.

A series of melodic beeps from his laptop caught his attention: Mail Waiting.

From Sydney. "Whoa, you're up late..." he murmured as he clicked to read it.

"Jarod, I need your help urgently. Call the secure line. Please."

-------------------

Sydney paced incessantly back and forth in the dim cubby hole that was Broots' 'office'.

"C-can you stop that please? You're making me nervous."

"You're always nervous, Broots."

The phone rang suddenly, and Broots nearly jumped out of his skin. As he reached hurriedly to answer it, Sydney glanced a 'see what I mean' look in his direction.

"Sydney?"

The psychiatrist felt a wave of relief to hear Jarod's voice, strong and clear. "Thank you for calling, Jarod."

"Don't thank me yet. I don't know what you want me to do."

"Miss Parker has been kidnapped."

The other end went very silent for a moment... "When?"

"This morning. She was carjacked on her way to the Centre."

"Any ransom demands?"

"Not yet. It's been over 10 hours. It was reported to the police by a witness who took down her licence plate number."

"And you think someone from the Centre's responsible." It wasn't a question. Sydney was always amazed at Jarod's ability to read his mind. Perhaps another of his Pretender gifts.

"Jarod, I can send you all the information we have... you could do a simulation. Find out the kidnappers' motives and their movements..."

Jarod smiled inwardly at the request. "You mean one of _my_ simulations would actually be used to _help somebody_?" His gravelly voice was thick with sarcasm.

"I though that was your calling, Jarod," Sydney countered, "Helping those in need."

Jarod considered that. This task was certainly and odd interpretation of that calling. For a moment he contemplated what life would be like without Miss Parker forever on his trail...

But then, the Centre would undoubtedly choose someone else to track him down, and one with whom the games he played would not be half as much fun.

"Send me the details."

Sydney let out the breath he didn't realise he'd been holding. The pretender's life would certainly be easier if he abandoned Miss Parker to her fate, but if nothing else, Jarod would never let another person suffer willingly, and he also knew the history between them was extremely important to his protégé.

"Thank you Jarod. You know... if my presence would assist in the simulation..."

"I'm fine on my own."

"I'm not trying to reel you in! I just want to find Miss Parker. You and I used to work _together_, Jarod."

Silence for a moment, then...

"Meet me at the scene of the kidnapping tomorrow at ten."

"I'll be there." As Sydney placed the phone back in its cradle, he turned to meet Broots' curious expression.

"Y-you're going to meet him?"

"Send all the information, Broots. And I _can _count on you to keep all of this in the strictest confidence, yes?"

Broots gulped, nodding quickly.

**End of Part Two**


	3. Sim City

_**SIM CITY**_

**__**

**Part Three - Sim City**

****

From the roof of a small apartment block, Jarod studied the street below, instantly aware of all strategic possibilities for an ambush. He fully expected as much. It was not that he expected Sydney to betray him, nor, for that matter, did he believe that Broots would have told his superiors about the meeting, but Jarod was certain that the two of them were monitored constantly by the Centre, not trusted, but used as bait to catch him.

The whole circumstance of Miss Parker's carjacking was undoubtedly an elaborate sting operation, and he was taking no chances.

A local bus pulled up, and Jarod saw Sydney step off. He looked well, Jarod thought, at once relieved and surprised to find the care he still held for his former guardian's well-being. Centre or not, he was the closet thing to family Jarod had ever known.

Sydney, waited for the bus to move on, and simply stood at the bus stop. He raised his arms slightly and turned in a slow 360° motion to show Jarod he wasn't armed, looking up to the tops of the surrounding buildings the whole time.

_How well he knows me_, thought Jarod, _he could almost be a Pretender himself_. But it wasn't Sydney he was worried about. It was whoever had tailed him. He scanned the area again, looking for any suspiciously behaving locals, parked vehicles or open windows from which a sniper could shoot. Everything seemed normal.

Sydney waited patiently at the bus stop. He knew that Jarod would have arrived long before him, and be assessing the situation as only he could. He noted the phone booth across the street; it was the one from which the witness to the carjacking phoned it in.

"Smart move, taking the bus," Jarod's always ironic tone drifted from somewhere behind. Sydney turned, smiling.

"Jarod," irrationally, he wanted to embrace him, as he had always been forbidden to do inside the Centre. He was never to behave as a father to the subject, he had been warned. Instead he extended his hand, and Jarod hesitated, not taking it.

"Is this your way of calling a truce, Sydney?" His tone was challenging.

"Does it need to be? I didn't know we were enemies."

"You still work for the Centre, you're still hunting me--"

"Because I feel that being on the inside is the only way to protect you." He let his hand fall, empty. "You must believe that, Jarod."

Sydney swept his gaze around the immediate vicinity, changing the subject.

"You surveyed the area? I did my best to avoid being followed..."

"I couldn't spot anyone, if they are here they're well concealed."

"Do you have somewhere to perform the simulation?" Jarod nodded.

"Not the sophisticated kind of lab you're used to, I'm afraid." He turned and slid away behind the bus shelter, Sydney following.

Jarod ducked through a carefully snipped hole in a mesh fence, the wire rustling noisily, and then crunched over a few metres of broken glass.

_Early warning system,_ Sydney thought, nodding appreciatively to himself. He followed Jarod through a squeaky door into a disused storage warehouse. Looking around, he noted that there was only the one entrance or exit.

In the centre of the room there were lines scrawled on the floor with beautifully crafted cardboard buildings; a scale route-plan of Miss Parker's daily drive from her house to the Centre, complete with all side-streets, intersections and even a small toy phone booth in the correct spot. For anyone else this would have taken days to research and set up, but to Jarod this kind of attention to detail came as naturally as breathing.

"Very nice." Sydney gestured to the models.

"You know how I like to build things." The Pretender commented dryly.

"You've been to Miss Parker's home before, I take it?"

"Once or twice."

Jarod was uncomfortable. He shouldn't have invited Sydney to meet him. The psychiatrist knew him better than anyone alive, and there was no way of knowing if he was still intending to try and bring his runaway pupil 'home', as he liked to call it. He had a way of asking questions which always seemed to make him open up, drop his guard and tell the dangerous truth.

Even now, part of him felt the pull of familiarity in working with Sydney again, together doing a simulation; it was like he never escaped. His life on the outside had been full of wonders, of new experiences and opportunities to use his gifts for the deserving, but it had also been lonely. Every day was another pretence, every place another hideout, not a home, and all the people he met and helped would never really know him as Sydney did.

It was an awkward situation, indeed, but one thing eased Jarod's mind a little: the knowledge that even if Sydney's ultimate goal was to see his protégé back in the Centre, Miss Parker's safety was far more important right now. The game of hide and seek was on pause.

-------------------

Miss Parker stared at the ceiling, emotionally exhausted. She'd gone through shock, outrage, disdain, downright fury and, yes, she could admit to herself, fear, and had finally settled on smouldering hatred for the repugnant neanderthal and his two equally loathsome co-kidnappers who had manhandled her, bound and gagged, up four flights of narrow, urine-stinking stairs and secured her to a decrepit mattress on the floor.

The grubby 2nd floor apartment looked like it could have been advertised in the paper as, "Ideal place to hold hostage, filthy conditions, dirt cheap." And the worst part was, this incident would do nothing to revive her already flagging reputation as a woman who could take care of herself. Whoever was behind it, and she had several choice suspects, had obviously hired these illiterate thugs right out of the yellow pages, as it was clear by now they weren't after her car, her money or, thank god, her person.

She wondered exactly how much she was worth, be it monetary or some other demands, to the mastermind of the kidnapping, and who would get the bill. With a painful stab, she realised that there were very few people in the world who would actually consider paying for her release. Her father, perhaps, but then, she wouldn't be that shocked to find he was behind this, or even that he found her predicament convenient, to keep her from further prying into his business. Sydney would probably be doing whatever he could, but, given their track record with getting Jarod back, she wasn't optimistic. And then there was Boy Wonder himself. This could be just his kind of prank, god knows the man made it his life's mission to taunt her, but there was something off about it, some line which she felt he would never cross. If he strolled in now, grinning in that infuriating way, she swore next time she'd kill him...

But in the back of her mind, there was the serious voice which hated, but knew he was her only hope.

_Get me out of this Jarod._

**End of Part Three**


	4. Motives And Memories

**_SIM CITY_**

**Part Four - Motives and Memories**

Crouched over his impeccable scale model, Jarod frowned, silent.

Behind him, Sydney paced.

"Where are you hiding?" The psychiatrist's voice was gentle, coaxing.

Eyes closed, Jarod ran his finger down the miniature road, stopping briefly at an intersection with a little plastic phone-box, then turning left down a tree-lined street. He moved to a model hedge and tapped it.

"Just behind this hedge. The best way to get her is to stage an accident--" he pointed to the road beside the hedge, "--Make her think she hit me." He turned and dipped a finger in some nearby black poster paint and smeared some skid marks on the road.

"Very good. So, she stops the car..."

"She's panicked, off-guard. I'll pull a gun, make her get over to the passenger seat, get in and drive."

"You're not going to make her drive at gunpoint? Surely that would be the logical thing to do."

Jarod opened his eyes and breathed out slowly, letting his own personality resurface. He turned to Sydney.

"This man isn't thinking logically. It's his first kidnap and he's nervous, too flustered to be sensible. There are several quieter streets on Miss Parker's route to work, with less chance of there being witnesses. He chose this site in a hurry."

Sydney nodded, an appreciative little smile on his face as he saw the almost superhuman understanding on Jarod's face. He was certain. He didn't guess, he simply knew.

Despite his fears for Miss Parker's safety, it was wonderful to work together again. In his mind Sydney recalled the sim-lab back at the Centre; remembered doing countless simulations with Jarod throughout his childhood, his teens, and right up to the year he escaped, the Pretender's intuitive genius never failing to delight and amaze him. If anyone could discover who had taken Miss Parker and where, Jarod could. Sydney came over and crouched next to Jarod.

"All right, so he's a hired gun, not used to this kind of thing. Where is he going to take her?"

"Somewhere he feels safe, in control. This job has him so worked up, he'll need somewhere he finds comforting and familiar. I'd start with family."

"Excellent work, Jarod," Sydney nodded approvingly at the Pretender, "I'm glad to see that being in the outside world hasn't affected your abilities--"

"You thought it might!" Jarod turned to Sydney, suddenly angry, "You think that someone like me can only thrive in a lab? Let me tell you something, being here in the _real _world for just a year, I've learned more that I did the rest of my life in the Centre!" Jarod ignored the momentary stab of guilt at callously dismissing thirty years of Sydney's teaching. "I've met people, connected, lived a hundred different lives! I've brought families back together and soon I'll find my own family." He stood up and stomped off towards the door.

"You mistook me, Jarod," Sydney's reply was calm as he stood, but made no attempt to follow. The gentle voice stopped Jarod in his tracks, but he stubbornly kept his back turned.

"I only meant that you haven't done a controlled simulation for some time, and I'm happy to see your focus is as clear as ever." He went up to Jarod, then, and gently put a hand on his shoulder. "I've followed your activities out in the world, and I've rejoiced in your new experiences and your good deeds. I never wanted to restrict you, Jarod, or use you..."

Jarod turned to face Sydney, seeing the sincerity in his mentor's eyes. "Then why did you?" He demanded.

Sydney looked away, struggling with the answer. Not a day went by that he didn't feel the weight of this truth, and wish it could be lifted.

"It was-- _you_ were-- an experiment, a mystery. The Centre gave you to me to unlock and develop... that's how it started. Even in the beginning I saw the wrong in denying you a normal life, but..."

"But the Centre had you. Just like they had me."

"No, I can't throw off the responsibility. I got caught up in the project, I _kept _you imprisoned. I could have tried to get you out... Catherine Parker tried..."

He turned away and walked back to the model. "I don't expect forgiveness, Jarod, not yet anyway, perhaps in the future. But I _can _hope to be of some use to you in the present, in getting Miss Parker back, and..." He looked Jarod straight in the eyes, earnestly, "..._Not _letting them catch you in the process."

Jarod held Sydney's gaze, for the first time seeing beyond his own anger at the Centre, anger which he had often directed at his former 'keeper'. His head swam with memories of past simulations, of the tortuous situations and scenarios he was made to live through, and through it all had been Sydney's calm, insistent voice, endlessly questioning, providing a running commentary to his life.

Ever since his escape, he'd kept in touch with Sydney without really knowing why. Perhaps just habit, maybe some need for familiarity, for some other person to acknowledge he was a real person beneath the pretence. But here in this dim warehouse, in the middle of yet another simulation, Sydney was here for him, not to trap or exploit him but simply to support him, to act like-- Jarod struggled at the thought-- any father would.

Jarod stood motionless, worried by the unbidden feelings, but Sydney had picked up the scale model of Miss Parker's house and was turning it over in his hands, musing.

"Do you think you could... this is more Angelo's talent, but... can you empathise with Miss Parker, find out how she would weather the ordeal?"

Jarod blinked his distraction away and went back to the model. He took the house from Sydney, remembering how he built it exactly to the image in his photographic memory. He closed his eyes, his mind suddenly transported inside the house, back to this morning.

He stood behind Miss Parker as she fixed her hair in front of the mirror. Her appearance was pristine as always, a façade that Jarod knew only masked the confusion within.

"You have to believe you'll catch me, don't you Parker?" Jarod asked her retreating form as she left the house with determined step. "Because then it would be over, and you could escape the Centre yourself."

Now he was in the passenger seat of the car as she drove, distractedly to work. Screeching brakes and a violent jolt forwards as the car halted. "She's panicked, sickened by the thought that she might have killed someone..."

Sydney listened to the narration, wishing he could see the images inside Jarod's head.

As Jarod saw in his mind's eye a faceless thug pull a gun, he could almost feel Miss Parker's frustration and disgust, both at her attacker and herself. "She's humiliated at being tricked, angry... and scared."

"Do you think she knows her assailant?" Sydney prompted.

"No. But she's agonising over it, imagining every possible enemy, every possible motive... she starts to question her value, to wonder if there is anyone who cares enough to ransom her..."

Jarod fell silent, listening to his own intuition. He could almost hear the cog wheels turning in Miss Parker's head, accusing _him _of orchestrating her capture, but deep down knowing him better than that. And he felt her boiling fury in admitting that, this time, she needed him.

He half-smiled as he heard the silent plea... _Get me out of this Jarod!_

**End of Part Four**


	5. Playing Detective

**SIM CITY**

_Author's Note: Thanks go to a very astute reviewer who corrected me on my use of Italian in this chapter… accuracy is all-important!!_

**Part Five - Playing Detective**

The thugs were arguing again. Miss Parker held her breath and strained to hear the conversation out in the dingy, stinking hallway.

They were brothers; that much was fairly obvious from their looks and the familiar way they treated each other. The one who had initially carjacked her was the elder, and yet he was strangely flustered by the whole business. The younger, on the other hand, was cool and cold about it. Her time at the Centre had taught her to recognise pure evil without conscience from those who were only following orders. The difference between herself and her sadistic brother, Lyle.

She'd heard mention of another person, undoubtedly the mind behind the kidnapping, and from the way the spineless one talked of him, he was a man to be feared. Hardly surprising if they were, as she suspected, dealing with someone from the Centre.

She wriggled savagely at her handcuffs, which only served to make them cut more deeply into her already swollen wrists, and she was still cursing aloud as the brothers returned.

"Whassa matter babe? You break a nail?" The younger, more obnoxious of the two asked with a leer.

Parker glared daggers at him.

"The last man who called me 'babe' wasn't a man for much longer," she hissed.

"Well then I guess I'll have to take full advantage of it now, huh?" He crouched at the end of the mattress and took hold of her ankles.

The older one clamped a heavy hand on his brother's shoulder. "Boss said we're not to mess with her." The young thug let go of Miss Parker's legs and turned to scowl horribly at the other.

"You know, any time now I'm gonna get tired of your whinging. They should've left this to me. You'd wet yourself at a gas-station hold-up!"

A flurry of angry taunts and retorts broke out. Miss Parker rolled her eyes. It was going to be a long night.

- - - - - - - - - -

Sydney looked distinctly uncomfortable, Jarod noted with a hidden grin, as they approached the door of a nicely-kept suburban house. Jarod stepped up and used the shiny brass knocker, then adjusted his sharp black suit and took out the false ID that marked him as a police investigator of the state of Delaware. Sydney hovered just behind him, no doubt keenly aware that he had no ID, and no particular talent for acting.

"What's the matter, you never played Detective before, Sydney?" Jarod teased him.

The door opened a moment later, and a little boy of around seven looked up at the two men with wide blue eyes. Jarod's official demeanour melted away and a gentle smile softened his features. Sydney marvelled at the instant change in the Pretender's behaviour. He knew well how much Jarod loved kids; and a good deal of his personal quests were to the ultimate benefit of some wronged or mistreated child.

"Hi there. We're policemen. Is your mommy at home?" he asked the boy. The lad nodded, not a trace of wariness in his innocent face, and disappeared inside again only to be quickly replaced by a woman of similar age to Jarod, who wiped her hands down a jam-stained apron as she greeted them.

"What can I do for you, Detectives?" she asked politely, scanning Jarod's identity card briefly.

"You made a 911 call at 7.15 yesterday morning regarding a possible carjacking. We're just following up the details of that."

"Oh, the other detectives already asked me everything…" she began, confused.

"I'm from a different branch, called in for this case. I'm sorry to trouble you again, but really I just wanted to find out if there were any details that didn't make it into the other report. Was there anything remarkable about the man, any markings on his skin or obvious features that stood out?"

"Not really; he looked pretty out of place in these parts, more like an inner-city guy, but other than that nothing stood out about him."

"How do you mean 'out of place'?" Sydney asked, and for an instant Jarod's eyebrows shot up in surprise that the shrink was actually participating in the 'pretend'.

"Well, I got the impression he really needed the money. He was… scruffy. Ripped jeans, dirty shirt, even his shoes didn't match."

Jarod's intuition piqued at that. He smiled and extended his hand, proffering a little business card. "Well, that could be important. Thanks for your help, ma'am. If you think of anything else, here's my number."

The lady took the card and bid them good luck as they left.

"You're on to something, Jarod?" Sydney enquired as they got into Jarod's pristine hire-car, "What are you thinking?"

Jarod smiled. "I can't think on an empty stomach. Let's eat."

- - - - - - - - - -

During Jarod's time on the outside, he'd made a point of sampling every possible kind of cuisine he could discover. Suddenly free to choose something other than the Centre's bland but nutritionally balanced menu, he had been overwhelmed by the variety of foodstuff available to the rest of the world, much of it sweet and fattening. He smiled as he remembered how shocked he had been at the unhealthy diet of the general population… and then he'd been given his first Pez. Jarod had quickly become a confirmed lover of any kind of dessert, so it made sense that the first meal he and Sydney had eaten together in more than a year should be at an ice-cream parlour.

He tried to cover his grin as Sydney licked sedately at his gigantic toffee-pecan-crunch ice-cream - somehow it looked so ridiculous.

"So, what did you get from the witness?" he asked over his massive dessert. The expectant look in his eyes reminded Jarod of so many of their simulations, when he would eagerly await his prodigy's intuitive assessment of the situation.

"The kidnapper definitely doesn't come from the Centre. 'Scruffy' is _not_ their style. Rather he's a ruffian hired by someone who knows Parker, and knows how valuable she is. The boss is operating through his lackeys because she would recognise him. But, if the kidnap was Tower-sanctioned, Broots would've heard it on the grapevine."

Sydney was a little surprised at Jarod's faith in Broots' ability to ferret out Centre secrets. Sure the man was good with his surveillance, but the confidence in the Pretender's voice was a telling thing. Jarod had enlisted Broots' help with something. What might that have been? He made a mental note to interrogate the hacker about it later, and listened as Jarod continued thinking out loud.

"Yeah, I'd say our mastermind is a Centre man, for sure, but not a current one. Ex-employee maybe? Perhaps it's someone from Parker's colourful past. Old enemy, old score…" he looked up into Sydney's steady gaze, then lowered his tone of voice.

"But we have another concern. I don't need to tell you that Mr. Parker and Raines will have their own investigations up and running soon, and they'll be sniffing round this area. You shouldn't be out here before them," Jarod cautioned him, "They'll know you've come to me for help. You need to get back there."

Before he had even finished the sentence he saw the disappointment in Sydney's eyes, followed quickly by a renewed determination. "I can help, Jarod!" Sydney countered, with a hint of a plea in his voice.

_He needs to be needed_, Jarod commented to himself. Part of him wanted to dash his old mentor's hopes, tell him that a Pretender works alone, and needs no one. But on this occasion he had to admit to himself that it felt good to include someone else in his investigation.

Sure, he could discover who took Miss Parker, devise a cunning plan to retrieve her and still manage to evade capture. Undoubtedly he would save the day, but just for once he would like someone else to appreciate the intricacies of such a venture, the thought that went into it, and perhaps, he admitted grudgingly, say "well done" to him at the end of it all. No one understood the complexities of Pretender problem-solving like Sydney.

_Maybe I need to be needed too._ Jarod conceded with a shrug. He dug further into his knicker-bocker glory and considered the scenario again.

"I'm certain Miss Parker has had dealings with this man in the past - that's what you need to be looking into. I'll keep sniffing after the hired thug."

Sydney smiled. "You're patronising me, Jarod, giving me a job to do which will get me back to the Centre and out of harm's way."

Jarod simply raised his eyebrows in reply, denying nothing.

"But you're right. Parker's past is a good starting point… someone she's crossed--"

"It's a fairly wide search parameter," Jarod put in with a smile.

Sydney smiled in return, dabbing at his mouth with a handkerchief as he rose. "Well then. I'll do my digging from the inside. But Jarod, be careful. Hired thug or not, it could be dangerous--"

"Save me the concern, Sydney. I _was_ a hit-man once." Jarod countered with the smile of a predator with a particularly satisfying hunt ahead of him.

Sydney placed a hand lightly on his pupil's shoulder. "Keep in touch, Jarod." He stepped out onto the street with a cursory glance around for suspicious characters, and strode back towards the bus station.

The short, chubby Italian owner of the ice-cream parlour came bustling over as he saw the older man depart.

"Your friend liked the _gelati_, _signor_ Jarod?" he asked with an eager edge to his heavily accented voice.

"Very much, Alessandro, _grazie_. He doesn't get much of it where he lives."

"_Si signor_?" The little man shook his head in sympathy. "A shame. It is so good on such a hot weekend as this."

Jarod nodded at his observation, but his mind was instantly elsewhere, following a train of thought. _A hot weekend indeed…_

- - - - - - - - - - -

The Pretender knelt in the middle of the road, studying the obvious skid-mark made by the tyre of Miss Parker's company car. He took a pen from his inside pocket and poked at the surface of the road. The tarmac gave a little, and the indentation of the pen lid was left there quite clearly.

The weather had been unseasonably hot for the past four days; it was how he had become acquainted with Alessandro's Gelati Café in the first place. But ice-cream wasn't the only thing which melted easily in this heat. Fresh tarmac also suffered.

A few orange cones were still dotted along the street to denote that roadworks were recently completed here. The street's smooth new surface would ordinarily have been hard as rock in 48 hours, but the weather was an unexpected assistant in Jarod's investigation.

He stood and stepped away from the skid mark, taking a wider view. At the side of the road exactly across from the end of the long black scuff he saw a large, low bush desnse enough to hide in, but flexible enough to allow a lightning fast dash out and across the road at the right moment.

Jarod examined the area of tarmac closest to the bush, and sure enough, there was his next clue. Smiling, he took out a piece of thin paper and a blue crayon and laid it over the indentations there. Partial shoe-prints, quite indistinct but obviously different, and moreover, made with different weight stresses. _A limp, and odd shoes..._ Jarod took his crayon rubbing and headed off to confirm his suspicions.

**End of Part Five**


	6. In The Dark

_**Sim City**_

**Part Six - In The Dark**

Broots was pacing again. An unabashed hypocrite in this case, he positively hated it when others paced around the tiny box-room that was his office because it further aggravated his already nervous disposition. It was a frequent habit of Miss Parker's, and very occasionally adopted by the usually placid Sydney, but since they weren't here to remark about the contradiction, he was going to pace.

Raines had squeaked into Broots' dim little computer room more than three hours ago demanding to know where Sydney was, to which the nervous little man could only shrug lamely and say, "He was following up some fresh information." Raines' answering scowl told Broots quite frankly that nothing he said would have been satisfactory.

He was just claming down after that stressful encounter when Mr. Parker invaded his office too, apparently furious at his daughter's failure to attend a small function for higher-level centre employees this evening. Such a snub would not be taken lightly by Mr. Parker's superiors. Broots privately suspected he had been talking Miss Parker up to them in the hopes of getting her more deeply involved in Centre intrigue and away from the temptation of simply quitting the organisation altogether.

Again Broots had nothing to say that was even close to the frightening truth, and Mr. Parker stalked off in a huff leaving orders to "Find her, now."

So now he paced, waiting for the phone to ring or the email inbox to chime… neither Sydney nor Jarod had been considerate enough to give him an update on the situation, a fact which he rather resented considering he was the one left behind to make their excuses.

With a click of the door which made Broots jump for the third time that evening, Sydney stepped in, a rather fatigued look about him.

"Evening, Broots. Has there been any communication from Jarod? Any ransom demands?" The silver-haired scientist sat down heavily in Broots' swivel chair, leaving him to perch on the edge of the desk.

"No, nothing. How did it go--" Broots' looked around furtively and dropped his voice to a whisper, "--With the simulation?"

A smile ghosted across Sydney's tired face. Broots knew instantly that Sydney had indeed made contact with Jarod; no one else could provoke so satisfied an expression in him… almost like a proud father.

"We have some leads," he replied in a vague understatement, "I'm confident that Jarod will find Miss Parker, but we have some digging to do to find who's behind all this."

- - - - - - - - - -

The lobby of the police station was not a peaceful place. Jarod had always noted with interest how the moon's waxing full seemed curiously influential to the criminal population. He'd turned up around sunset to a station no busier than one might expect in a mostly upper-middle-class neighbourhood, and yet the desk sergeants were oddly apprehensive. When he'd enquired about the strange tension in the atmosphere, the portly officer-in-charge had bluntly informed him that, "Folk just go crazy at full moon," to which a younger cop carrying a stack of manila folders grinned and put in, "Yeah, the whole precinct's overrun with werewolves!" He had earned himself another errand for his cheek.

Now it was barely two hours after sunset and already the lobby was filled with people waiting impatiently to have their statements taken or be booked; angry victims of purse-snatching, drunk youths flailing violently, prostitutes bitterly awaiting their reprimand, and all sorts besides.

And through all this Jarod tried to concentrate on the small screen in front of him. He sat at a woefully outdated PC in a small shabby office, separated from the chaotic lobby by a thin partition-wall, and clicked through page after page of the police criminal database, looking for a very specific set of details.

He'd received whole-hearted co-operation from the police here just as soon as he'd explained that he was visiting from a different precinct to solve a kidnapping on their turf. Instead of arguing the jurisdiction as Jarod expected, they'd been only too happy to virtually turn the case over to him. Already straining under a curiously lunar-affected workload, they were ready to admit a lack of urgency to a case with so little to go on up until now, with one witness but no missing person's report and no ransom demands of any kind.

A soft beep barely audible over the din of the waiting area notified him that his latest search was complete. He smiled as he saw the number of entries - just one: his kidnapper, beyond a reasonable doubt. Samuel Hanson, 36, currently at large and wanted by the State of Delaware for multiple offences. The man's file read like a social-commentary. It was the usual sob-story: broken home, fosterage, petty thievery which escalated to armed robbery, but nothing beyond that. _Until now,_ Jarod though grimly.

The bit that really interested Jarod, however, was the Distinguishing Features section. "Prosthetic Right Leg" it read. The felon had lost a limb to fire after discharging his sawn-off shotgun in a gas-station hold-up. Jarod read on down to the Known Accomplices section, and was again satisfied that his deduction had proved correct - the kidnap was indeed a family effort. Samuel's younger brother Gavin was suspected of narcotics possession and armed robbery also, but without convictions. He also had a known address.

They'd have to be fairly stupid to hide out there, Jarod thought, but it was worth a try. He printed the file and headed out into the still bustling entrance hall.

- - - - - - - - - -

Miss Parker's night wasn't getting any better. After a good two hours of consistent arguing, the brothers' quarrel had been interrupted by a phone call, which the younger one had had the sense to take outside so she wouldn't overhear.

He returned in an even blacker mood, if possible, and told his brother to pack up. They were leaving.

"Um, should we, err, knock her out or something?" The older, more uncertain of the thugs asked.

"Nah, just truss her up again," the younger man replied gruffly, then a taunting smile replaced the frown, "Not like anyone cares where she is anyway."

Miss Parker glared right back at him; no amount of hard looks or sadistic grins could possibly intimidate her! Back in the Centre her icy stare could strike fear into the hearts of far more sinister men than this snivelling criminal.

The words however, did begin to eat away at her as the older kidnapper one again gagged and blindfolded her. As determined as she was to remain strong through this ordeal, the same though had crossed her mind already. Her father would know she was missing by now, if only because she hadn't turned up to that ridiculous cocktail party he had been reminding her about for weeks. What, then, was he or anyone else at the Centre doing to retrieve her?

She felt a pang of childish resentment at all the resources, the money, the man-hours and the effort that had gone into searching for Jarod ever since his escape. Did she mean so much less to her employers, and her father, than he did?

Well and truly bound up again, she shuddered as the larger man yanked her up by her wrists and threw her over his shoulder like a sack of coal. The breath knocked out of her, she could only gasp raggedly as he stomped down the stairs and out into the balmy night air.

"We taking her car?" the older brother grunted.

"Nah, it'll have been reported by now."

Instead Miss Parker was shoved roughly into another vehicle, much less comfy than her immaculately kept saloon, and stinking of beer and cigarettes. The car lurched and sputtered as it sped away to God knew where.

- - - - - - - - - -

Not more than two hours after the kidnappers removed their prisoner, Jarod's borrowed police car pulled up outside the apartment leased to one Gavin Hanson. Naturally the first thing he spotted was Miss Parker's car right outside. Jarod's surprise at the criminals' carelessness was supplanted only by a grim determination to end this dangerous game once and for all.

Gun drawn, he crept silently up the reeking stairs to the door. No light emanated from the room. He nudged the door lightly with the barrel of the gun. Locked. _That doesn't mean they aren't in there,_ he told himself, but knowing all the while that probability was against him.

He took a calming breath and kicked the door in, gun and flashlight sweeping the room in an instant. Empty.

The rusty metal bed-frame still had three sets of handcuffs on it; Jarod surmised the fourth must now bind Miss Parkers' hands at her new location. He went over and checked the mattress for any signs of blood which would indicate how the kidnappers were treating her. He sighed in relief as he found no trace; if she was indeed to be ransomed back to her father, the thugs were likely under orders not to damage her.

A glint of light turned his eyes down to the floor by the head of the bed. The harsh yellow street-light coming in through the window reflected off of something metal. He found the end of the object and pulled. Out came a string of little silver bells, interspersed with small hematite beads. A shock of recognition jolted him back to a dim room, nearly a year ago.

An underground storage room on SL-26, deep inside the Centre, sealed off and forgotten. Not even Sydney new of its existence, and yet there he had discovered a box of truths and treasures. The silver bell-bracelet had belonged to Catherine Parker once. When he was still a boy Jarod had learned that the faint jingling signalled her approach and made him feel at ease. He had taken the precious trinket and posted it to Miss Parker, a reminder that whatever the Centre might wish her to be, she was her mother's daughter still.

And now the bracelet had found its way back into his hands, and, if Jarod's suspicions of what Sydney's search would turn up proved accurate, Catherine Parker's daughter was in more danger than she had been from the Centre itself.

- - - - - - - - - -

The small beam from Sydney's Mag-Lite was woefully inadequate for the task of reading extremely small text off a computer printout in a dark corridor. He'd wanted to print as fast as possible to lessen the noise, and that meant collating pages and selecting the quick 'draft' mode of the printer, which made his task now all the more difficult. But at least he could be silent.

Sydney had taken many more precautions than usual, leaving work at the appropriate time, signing out at the front desk as usual and making sure to say goodnight to Raines and Mr. Parker on the way out. If the pair of them were aware of Miss Parker's situation, they were keeping up a good show of ignorance. Broots had packed up for the evening too, and left with a slightly over-acted bounce in his step to pick up little Debbie from drama club.

"Any chance we could find a place with some chairs to do this?" Broots whispered beside him, "This concrete's cold."

Sydney scowled at him like he was a moaning child, but silently admitted that perhaps sitting in a dark Sub-Level tunnel was not the cleverest way to go through so much complex information.

He rose, stretched his back and heard the vertebrae crack back into place, then stepped lightly off in search of a room with some appropriate furnishings. The third door he tried opened into what looked like an old sim-lab. No surprise, it was equipped with rusty metal restraints bolted into the walls. Sydney shuddered at how the Pretenders had been abused over the decades… He shook the thought away - he had his own Pretender to assist just now, so it was back to work.

He and Broots spread their paper out on a large oval table in the centre of the room and continued their reading. Sydney was rubbing his eyes more and more frequently from strain and fatigue, forcing himself to continue squinting in the feeble light, when his brain screamed at him to close his eyes and rest his head.

"Oh! Oh!" Broots rose excitedly from his chair, his exclamation jerking Sydney back to alertness, "What about this?" he asked as he planted the page he'd been studying down in from of Sydney and shone his flashlight over the last paragraph.

"In the matter of Miss Parker's suspected attachment, we advise caution." Sydney read aloud. "Centre resources will not be spared to rectify any mistakes caused by emotional interference with the Project. Termination of partnership and reassignment are recommended."

"I'd say that's fairly relevant," Broots commented.

Sydney nodded. "This is from 1987, before Jarod escaped. Miss Parker was still a Cleaner then. We need to find more about this Project, and whoever she was partnered with at the time. Good work, Broots. Keep looking."

With a sigh, Broots sat back in his own chair and turned over the next page in a very tall stack in front of him.

**End of Part Six**


	7. The African Connection

_**SIM CITY**_

**Part Seven - The African Connection**

Giant though he was, he moved with the stealth of a hunting cat. Silently he walked though the cavernous warehouse, leaving only the lightest of footprints in the virgin layer of dust.

He stepped up to a stack of wooden crates, one of hundreds of similar stacks to line the walls, set a hand to the slatted side, and with one swipe through the thickly overlaid dust, he revealed the faded text beneath. In Swahili and English it proclaimed that the box was Centre Property, not to be opened without authorisation, and also highly dangerous.

He grinned, a flash of white teeth in a face as dark as the gulf of the unlit warehouse. His plan wasn't simply cunning, it was a triumph of delicious irony. It was genius as only the Centre could truly appreciate it.

- - - - - - - - - -

Jarod's frustration had, in the last half hour, escalated to dangerous levels. A box of doughnuts and a painstakingly crafted clay sculpture of a Harley Davidson had been among the first innocent victims to his impotent rage at the apparent hopelessness of the situation.

The trail had gone cold, for the moment anyway, since his research had yielded no other likely accomplices or familiar locations where the kidnappers might have taken their prisoner. He sat with the pathetically slim police files on the Hanson brothers laid out before him, as well as the lease documents to the dingy flat they'd vacated and his notepad of scribbled statements from the neighbours, all of which seemed to say the same thing: the boys were petty scum. That he already knew, but there was simply no information at all on their current employer, which led Jarod to the assumption that they were dealing with a very cautious, very intelligent mastermind.

And when dealing with someone from the Centre, the word mastermind could be taken very literally. This adversary could very well match his own intellect; could be Pretender, empath, psychic or something else entirely.

A shrill jingle from his pocket pierced his sombre reflections. He snatched it up hurriedly and glanced at the called ID with a sigh of relief.

"Sydney," he answered, trying to keep the note of hopeful expectation out of his voice. Part of him admitted he didn't want Sydney to know of his dead-end. "What have you got?"

"The man behind it." Jarod winced slightly as he recognised absolutely no trace of smugness in the scientists' voice. Sydney was all business, and his focus pulled Jarod abruptly out of his wallowing.

"This goes way back to Miss Parker's career as a Cleaner," Sydney continued, "And a project she worked on in Africa. You might not believe this, Jarod, but Miss Parker was quite attached to her partner on the job, a man called Atambo."

Jarod smiled to himself. So there _was_ a genuinely emotional woman inside that spiky shell somewhere after all. "I didn't think the Triumvirate were so tolerant of office romances."

"Well, they were worried enough to keep an open file on the situation," Broots cut in uncharacteristically. Jarod deduced that he'd made the majority of important finds in this case, and couldn't keep the triumph out of his voice. "And that was some _major_ encryption too, I can tell ya--"

"There's more, Jarod," Sydney cut off Broots' bragging, "But I don't know how much I can tell you from here."

"Can you send it to me?"

"You'll have to do it from your house," Sydney told Broots in a slightly lower tone, then, to Jarod, "The atmosphere is pretty tense in the Centre just now; I'm starting to wonder if Mr. Parker has had some kind of communiqué from Atambo, because he's exhibiting increased stress-levels--"

"Thank you, Sydney," Jarod interrupted him before he could launch into an instinctive assessment of Mr. Parker's emotional state.

"You'll make more of the information than I can, Jarod, but I am certain that this whole scenario concerns you. Atambo's agenda is a mystery, but both you and Miss Parker have been thorns in his side in the past. Be careful."

- - - - - - - - - -

A frothy cappuccino was set down next to the keyboard. Jarod smiled his thanks to the waiter and continued reading the documents before him. The internet café was a little, out of a the way place that Jarod felt confident the Centre was not likely to be surveilling at the moment, and the coffees there were particularly good.

He slurped the foam off the top, trying to take stock of the information. He felt uneasy being back in Blue Cove for any length of time, but he was now almost certain that Miss Parker was being held somewhere not too far from the Centre itself.

Sydney and Broots had definitely unearthed all the juicy details on Miss Parker's one-time affair with the African-born Atambo, but they weren't so clued-up on Jarod's own history with the man. Sydney had told Jarod he'd been a thorn in Atambo's side. _A knife in his back, more like._ He thought grimly. With crystal clarity his mind dove into the past, to his first few months of freedom…

His awe at the wonders of the outside world had not distracted him from keeping a close eye on Centre activities. He had escaped, but he was keenly aware that the abuse was ongoing for so many others.

He had gotten wind of some nasty dealings in Africa, where much of the Centre's funding seemed to originate. Posing as an official in the Department of Immigration, he had located three families of Tanzanian refugees who begged asylum of the United States on the grounds that they would be murdered in their own country. Bandits would attack their farms, they claimed, but Jarod confided in them that he was a Centre escapee and in return got the real story.

The farmers were employed by the Centre, their mango plantations a cover for the cultivation of a much more valuable, and dangerous, crop. A plant whose sap had psychotropic qualities was produced in massive quantities, refined and shipped to Delaware.

Jarod was well aware of the uses to which the Centre put this substance: inducing panic attacks and hallucinations for the purpose of study, creating a mind-state of susceptibility to programming and even changing a subject's personality completely and permanently. The victims of this treatment were numerous, Jarod discovered, and among was the little boy named Timmy, whose character was irrevocably altered by the drug's effects, resulting in the empathic but mentally shattered Angelo.

Jarod's first direct act of sabotage on a Centre operation had been a huge success. Three families were saved from execution, three entire plantations of the crop destroyed and the overseer, Atambo, blamed for the catastrophe, fled for his life to the other side of the world.

_And now he's back…_ Jarod pressed hard against his eyelids, trying to wipe away the mounting fear that this time he was up against an enemy with more malice in his heart than any he'd faced before. And not just against him.

The information Sydney had sent had been a definite eye-opener. Jarod had not been in contact with Miss Parker for a period of several years before his escape. He still thought of her as the sweet little girl who would sneak in to visit him, when in reality she was off tying up the Centre's loose-ends, usually with a gun.

Back in 1987, while Jarod was still performing simulations with Sydney like a good little lab-rat, Miss Parker had been sent on assignment to Africa to investigate problems within the network of Centre-owned plantations, and to eliminate those causing the problems.

Whether or not she was aware of her murder-mission from the start and later changed her mind, or whether she was kept in the dark about the fate of the African farmers until the last moment, Jarod would never know, but the files on his screen outlined the circumstances that led to Miss Parker's reassignment.

The Centre's cautionary memo about Parker's romantic attachment to Atambo had proved correct. The lovers had had an acrimonious break-up over their differences in attitude to their assignment. Miss Parker had refused to kill the plantation workers, appealed to her father and demanded to be stood-down as a Cleaner. She returned to Delaware never to see Atambo again.

So, finally the criminal profile was falling into place. Atambo's motive in all this was undoubtedly revenge upon his old flame, and perhaps to punish Mr. Parker for making him the scapegoat in the aftermath of Jarod's sabotage several years later.

But this created another question: why go to all this trouble? He could have shot her down in the street for his revenge on both the Parkers.

_So what more does he want? _Jarod felt the answer like a lump of cold metal in his gut.

"He wants me."

- - - - - - - - - -

**End of Part Seven**


End file.
